I reinstalled a DELL Desktop. Hope this helps !

have a Dell E521 Desktop computer. I reinstalled XP successfully a few days ago. Let me tell you how to do it . Even though Dell E521 is not laptop, the basic steps should be the same.


1) You need to have two CDs, Operating System CD and Drivers and Utility CD. Both Cds should come from Dell when you purchased the computer.

2) Reboot you machine, immediately hit F12, then chose Onboard CD-Rom Drive (or something like that).

3) Insert you Operating System CD (which is XP). Run the setup. Choose format all, it formats and installs everything for you. It asks you some questions during this process, you can just choose the answers, they are all pretty simple. This process takes about one hour.

4) Now, you have finished install the XP.

5) At this stage, if you go from:

Start->my Computer (right click) -> property->hardware->Device Manager, you will see some yellow question marks at the Other Devices, you need to install the Network Drivers now.

6) Insert the Drivers and Utilities CD, you should choose the network drivers manually, it has about 5 ~6 different packages (something like: Ethernet Driver, Audio Dirver, SM Bus Control , etc …) you need to install them one by one.

7)Now, if you go from:

Start->my Computer (right click) -> property->hardware->Device Manager, you will see all those yellow question marks are gone. you will see "Network adaptors" is there.